"My name is Nathan and camping is my game."
I've always wanted to say that. Now that I've said it, I'm not sure it's accurate or honest.
It's true, I'm on the road, camping. The other truth is, I've not been honest with myself about the reason I'm on the road, camping.
I'm twenty-seven years old and still living with my parents. They think I'm a lecturer at the local community college. My parents believe I spend most of my time in my bedroom looking at pornography, or worse. My mother also thinks that I'm freeloading off them and I have no future and no plan. The truth is, I'm an electrical engineer with a focus on microchip design and microcode development. I work, in the background, on a major, unreported defense department project, for a little-known private company. That means, I make a boatload of money and I work from home. When the project is finished, I'll be able to create the home of my dreams, pay off my parent's debts and set them up for the rest of their lives. I just can't tell them how I managed it.
The spring semester was over and my mother, a high school teacher, was now home full time. With us both in the house all day, she was going to nag me to death. She wants me to get a real job and get out of the house and she never misses a chance to tell me. I've heard her telling my dad, she wants me to leave so they can get on with the rest of their lives. For her, retirement is the golden ring.
My dad is on the fence. He believes in me. He always has. He walks on a knife-edge, between my mother's demands and my future that he believes in, without out a shred of evidence.
Moving out isn't as easy as it seems. I would have to find another cover job. The community college position is perfect and my supervisor didn't think it would be easy to set up another one. While the company worked on it, I gave my mother half of what she wants. I told her I was leaving, for the summer, and going camping. I told her, and my dad, that I needed time to think and to come up with a plan. A half-truth but it would have to do.
I bought a small tent. It was labeled a two-person tent. It's five feet wide and seven and a half feet long and just over three feet high. Never having camped before, it seemed perfect. Twice the space I'd need. The salesman offered his advice and I also bought a ground cloth for under the tent.
I added a full-sized air mattress, never calculating that it would consume over seventy percent of the floor space of my new tent. A sleeping bag, propane stove and some camping pots and kitchenware completed my kit.
I packed camp style clothing, my secure, Government Issue laptop and a wireless network hotspot for my secure, tempest tested, government issued phone and hit the road in my five-year-old SUV. I told my supervisor I was taking a break but that I could work, when necessary, from the road.
I headed north, toward the Adirondacks, the Finger Lakes and Lake Placid. I drove north for over six hours, through Pennsylvania and New Jersey looked for a campground near Binghamton, NY. I found a KOA about five pm.
The campground wasn't what I expected. It was composed mostly of drive through pads for campers and RV's. It did have eight tent only sites. I got the third site in the line of sites along the rear fence of the property.
I spread out the ground cloth after clearing a space free of rocks, twigs and other things and set up my tent. It wasn't supposed to be difficult but I needed to refer to the diagrams in the instructions to get it correct. It seemed large on paper. I real life it was very small. It was over three feet tall but only in the middle with sides sloping down to the ground.
Getting the air mattress set up was the second challenge. I had planned to put it at the back of the tent, furthest from the opening but it was easily a foot longer than the tent was wide. I turned it lengthwise and inflated it with the included, foot-operated air pump. About half the mattress was useable. The rest was against the sloping side of the tent, only a foot of floor space was available on the other side for the rest of my baggage and the mattress blocked most of the entrance. "I'll live," I thought. "It's only me."
It was after six before I was settled. I walked the half mile to the bathhouse, peed and went back to my tent to read and relax. My ereader was fully charged but the only place to sit was an old, well-used, wooden picnic table on the site. I read until I was too uncomfortable to sit at the table. I decided to skip supper since I'd had a late lunch at a fast-food restaurant on the drive up and I hadn't stopped for groceries. I started a list of things I'd need to get tomorrow. A cooler for the groceries I didn't have was first on the list. I added matches for the propane stove, a mattress cover and camp chair.
I lay down in the tent, mostly to test the air mattress, and tried to read further. It was getting near sunset and the daylight was rapidly disappearing. I added a lantern to the shopping list.
I grabbed soap, a towel and clean underwear and headed for the bathhouse again. One look inside the showers and I opted to just wash my face in the sink. I dropped everything back at my tent and decided to walk through the campground just for the exercise. Thirty minutes later, I was about halfway around the campground and it was dark. Blackout dark. I mentally added a torch to the list of things I had to buy.
I walked back toward my tent along the back of the property. I came to the last tent in the row first. Tent site eight, five sites from mine. There was an over large tent on a ground cloth that was at least ten-foot square. A huge bear of a man was leaning against the picnic table on the site. He was probably six foot four or more and almost that wide across his shoulders. He shaved his head and had a full black beard, not like a "Duck Dynasty" beard, more like Paul Bunyan. He wore a black and red-checkered flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and working man dungarees. Not Levis or jeans. Those are fashion statements. His were real dungarees. Steel toes work boots with thick soles completed his outfit. At least three hundred pounds and he didn't look overweight. He had a beer in one hand and there were three crushed empties on the table and another on the ground. He looked like someone I would be wise to avoid.
"Yo," he called to me as I passed by.
I stopped and looked in his direction. "Nice night for a walk," he said.
"It is," I replied.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Nate."
"Nice name, Nate."
He didn't offer his name. "Where you heading?" he asked.
"Just north. No place specific," I answered.
"Say, Nate, do you like to play games?"
"Sure. Games can be fun," I answered.
"Card games?" he asked.
"Sure. Card games," I answered.
"Poker?" he asked as he pulled a deck of cards from his shirt pocket.
I had no idea where this was heading and I wanted to get back to my tent. "I've played poker but I'm not good at it," I said.
He turned toward his tent. "Little Bit," he called. "Git out here."
A waif of a girl exited the tent.
She was nearly five feet tall and thin. Maybe ninety pounds if she was caught in the rain. Her legs were perfectly proportioned and topped by black, very short, shorts. Daisy Dukes if they had been denim. She wore a sleeveless, white four-button shirt that came to the top of her shorts. The top lay on her chest without an indication that she had breasts.
She looked like a teenager until I looked at her face. Her face was symmetrical and the skin on her neck told me she was probably in her late twenties, maybe early thirties. Her dark brown hair was short and amateurly cut, almost mannish. Her expression was neutral, disinterested in her surroundings and what was happening.
The mountain of a man pointed to a spot on the ground and the woman sat down cross-legged.
"Have a seat, Nate," the mountain man said. "Let's play a little poker."
I sat. I don't know why. Probably fear.
"You and Little Bit play. I'll deal," he said as he shuffled the cards.
"We don't have anything to bet," I said.
"Strip poker," clarified the mountain. "Loser takes off a piece of clothing."
He started to deal before I could object.
